Esquire: hack our e-paper magazine cover!

In October, Esquire will publish its 75th anniversary issue with a cover made from eInk's electronic paper. Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Joel interviews deputy editor Peter Griffin about the tech and its hackability. (Seen here, not the actual magazine but a BBG mock-up.) Esquire to geeks: hack our e-ink magazine cover (BB Gadgets)

• [Anonymous]

  Not to be a downer, but this is a limited print run of 100,000 copies. Now, divide that number out across the country (or heck, across the world). How many copies is your local newsstand or Borders likely to get? How many geeks are in your town who are also looking to grab one (or a couple!) for the purpose of hacking? Being in a small-to-medium town in the midwest, I figure that we’ll get about two copies for the whole town, and at that point, they might as well be on the moon for all the good it does.

• [windfaerie]

  How come you’re only displaying 5 comments? I hope this is a technical error and not intentional?

  • [Antinous]

    If you’re asking about this thread, you’re only the sixth comment to come in.

• [buddy66]

  Remember sitting around, turning on, and tripping on this, oh, twenty-five years ago? I sure do. I was in Oregon and our forests were being cut down around us as we envisioned paperless papers, books, and magazines. Stoned visionaries we were, with no tech knowledge at all, but we saw the future. Comes from reading SF I guess.

• [Jeff]

  So, print is dead? At least the paper variety? I’ll assume that if we each had a Faux-book and we could download our fav zines into it each month for a very low price or for free, that we would do so. I’d love to save all that money I pay for zines each year. The ads could be far more interesting (it’s all about ad revenue). The faux-books would have enough memory so that static image print ads would be a thing of the past. If we apply the same sort of distribution model to book selling, how are books going to be protected? An E-zine can conceivable pay for itself from ad revenue and be free (paper and distribution each up most of cost). So, people are going to get used to Free zines, so what’s to keep the same thing from happening to books? Are E-books going to be free too, paid for by ads? And if E-books aren’t free, who’s going to stop them from being file-shared? If all my books are DMR-free, and I’m now used to reading all my books on my digital Faux-book, why won’t I just expect my E-book to be free too? After all, if it’s not a lump of paper, why place any value on it? Writers and readers better get used to the idea of lots of ads running in their E-books. And that business model also requires sneak-ware to update the ads and track compliance. Hack your Faux-book and you’ll be sorry. Paper books will soon be for spoiled fetishists. The rest of us will have transitioned into the far greener culture of digital media.

• [Sork]

  Much like The Daily Prophet in Harry Potter…

• [oliver dyas]

  Time for a link to a story by Richard M Stallman.

• [cha0tic]

  I’m wondering if I can put in an advance order at WH Smith’s.

• [js7a]

  First exposing blue boxing phreaks to the hobby and crafts world from the mob underground, and now this? I wonder what they’ve been publishing in the 30 years in between.

• [Matt Staggs]

  Peter Griffin?
  hehehehehehehehe…..(there’s no way to do replicate that monotone laugh in print, is there?)